Quoting [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Statement 2 is incorrect. Victimization survey data give us a different > source, but that produces confusion, not better data. Yes, lots of people > surveyed claim to have been crime victims but did not report to the police. > But when researchers focussed on surveys results for people who had reported > crimes a startling fact emerged. Some people who had reported crimes to the > police did not mention them when surveyed 8 months later. Possibly their > shock and indignation at being attacked caused them to make a police report > but 8 months later they had decided to suppress their crime experience and > think about it no more.
There is also a counterbalancing effect to the inability of people to remember, which is where people recall events that are prior to the period of interest in the survey. If the survey is over events in a lifetime of the respondent, than the failure of some respondents to remember properly is the only present effect of the two and leads to underestimation in the results. If the period is too short, than people claiming events prior to the period of interest will skew the results toward overestimation. While a survey may claim its results are for a given period of time, it is actually a measure of the events over an average period of the respondent's ability to recall them, which is determined by the survey's requested period of time and the respondents ability or lack thereof to recall events properly. The key is to design a study properly such that the two effects counter each other in equal measure. _______________________________________________ To post, send message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] To subscribe, unsubscribe, change options, or get password, see http://lists.ucla.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/firearmsregprof Please note that messages sent to this large list cannot be viewed as private. Anyone can subscribe to the list and read messages that are posted; people can read the Web archives; and list members can (rightly or wrongly) forward the messages to others.
